Wickens not happy stroking it in IndyCar

Wickens was not happy not being able to race hard at the end

Saturday's IndyCar GP was a fuel economy run for all the front runners. After Josef Newgarden brought out the caution flag on lap 56 out of 85 after spinning on the Turn 11 curb trying to pass Sebastian Bourdais, everyone was able to pit for the last time in the race, but it required running 29 laps for the last stint meant everyone was just trying to hit their fuel numbers.

Robert Wickens has admitted he has never had to fuel save before in DTM, GP3 and GP2, which were all 100% attack mode the full race.

"I've never raced in a category where you had to save fuel," said Wickens. "In winter testing you always put it on the list, like 'oh, we're going to practice a long run with fuel saving', and then obviously the engineers get greedy, you end up doing set-up change, set-up change, set-up change, and you run out of time, and then we don't actually end up doing it.

"So really, like apart from warm-ups or kind of like ins- and out-laps, I'm not really practicing it that much, and it's something that I became very apparent to me this weekend, like this afternoon, that that's something that I have to work on because obviously, they were hitting the same numbers that I was to try and make it to the end, but their pace was way quicker than mine.

"Yeah, I have to work on it, but yeah, that was definitely a first for me."

Now it's on to the Indy 500 and Wickens is excited.

"I'm ecstatic. I mean, I've dreamed of doing a 500 since I can remember," added the Canadian.

"There's been so much history, so many good drivers. I mean, anything can happen there. To be honest, I just want to take it, like I've been saying all along, just kind of one day at a time because every day in IndyCar seems to be different.

"I can't find kind of a trend to get into a routine to do this, that or the other. I feel like something is new every time. I think all next week it's just going to be interesting with practice and trying to get a good car.

"I was able to do my rookie orientation last week. It was fun. But definitely, once we get into kind of the qualiy trims and stuff like that, it's going to be a whole new animal because we were just driving with quite a bit of downforce on because it was just rookie orientation. I've heard the nightmares of qualiy trim, and I'm cautiously looking forward to it.